A Moment In Time
by Sashet
Summary: The Doctor has 'The Moment' but is the cost of using it too great? The Tenth Doctor wrestles with his conscience during the Time War


A/N:

Damn that Time War!

Damn that RTD!!

Inspired by EOT (and therefore slight spoilers for that) another look at The Doctor and what he was forced to do in the Time War.

Thanks to Dr D for the swift turnaround.

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A Moment in Time

I have the Moment but dare I use it – I know that it is the one thing that can finally bring this war to an end – but at what cost?

The cost has been almost unimaginable already, thousands of lives lost, some over and over again as time twisted and turned on them, reviving and killing in a seemingly endless spree of horror. Planets have burned and not just here. All over the galaxy civilisations have been torn from history, their names forgotten in the screams of their deaths.

The Time Lords have the power to see time, all of time, what has been and what is still to come and yet we didn't see this…the destruction of the Universe…the destruction of ourselves.

'_Ending, burning, falling, all of it falling__.'_

I hear the whisper through the fabric of space, a voice long forgotten, from another time and another place. A place that I once called home but have not done so for many hundreds of years and several regenerations…Gallifrey.

Is it a prophecy or a warning?

Is it what I must do – end the war before it is too late, before there is nothing left to be saved? But to end the war will mean using the Moment and it is a weapon of indescribable power and immeasurable destruction and I don't want to be the one responsible for unleashing it on the Universe.

'…_screaming fire…so burning...__ending'_

It seems that for as long as there has been a Universe there have been the Time Lords. We watched, we waited, we did nothing as planets and civilisations rose and fell. We NEVER interfered and that allowed us to believe we were somehow…better… than everybody else, above the petty disputes that plagued the 'lesser races' and yet we were as bad as they were…worse than they were. With no one to question us, no one to stop us, we became decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core and that would be our undoing.

I chose to ignore the whispers, the rumors that the Time Lords had changed. I chose to ignore the fact that they allowed the Time War to happen because it suited them to do so. I didn't want to believe that this unwinnable, endless war made them the enemies of the very people they had chosen to protect.

And now I must stop it, the renegade son of a once proud civilization, who had been denounced, banished and vilified many times over now has to be the one who holds the ultimate power of life and death in his hands.

Why me?

I never asked for this burden, I don't want to be a warrior, a fighter, I never have. I'm the man who never carries a gun. I'm the man who never would because in that way lies the corruption of the soul, a corruption that eats away at you until there is nothing left but hatred and desperation.

Maybe there is some other way to end this war without the destruction I have in my power.

'_A warrior's march…a rhythm of four…the heartbeat of a Time Lord__.'_

I don't hear anything except the far off sounds of war…the sounds of death after death after death…screaming across the vast expanses of space…begging for an end….any end…even the irrevocable death that the Moment will bring.

So why do I hesitate?

The power to end the suffering of the Universe is in my hands…all I have to do is find the courage. It would have been better to have given this poisoned chalice to The Master, he was…unstable…maybe even mad. He always had a lust for power and bloodshed that I could never understand. He wouldn't hesitate to make himself a God by using the Moment and yet where is he now?

My people's lives given up to save a hundred million others…it seems a noble sacrifice but who will remember us when we are gone? Maybe The Master is still alive somewhere away from all this death and destruction and he will become the last of the Time Lords. Not a choice that any of us would have made but one that we may have to accept if this war is to end.

'…_he must stand at arms or lose himself_…'

Am I still the same person who ran from the Untempered Schism because he was afraid of what it might show him? The good and the evil, the two sides of the same coin, the powers that hold the Universe in balance. I never stopped running and I never looked back, never thought of the life I had left behind because I thought that the one I was living was so much better. But now I am being asked to destroy any chance of that life I can't bring myself to do it.

Is it for all of them that I hesitate or is it for me? If I use the Moment then it will be the end of the Time Lords, all of them, even me. We will die before we can regenerate and that will be the end…the end of our time.

Time Lords and Daleks alike will perish never to have the hope of resurrection – I will be responsible for the genocide of the most powerful race ever to have lived but also the most evil race to have ever been allowed to exist.

Maybe this is my punishment for failing to stop Davros and the Daleks all those years ago. If I had changed the course of their history I wouldn't be faced with this now.

For a Time Lord sometimes I can be so blind to what the consequences of my actions will mean in the futures to come.

'…_Gallifrey falling…Gallifrey falls…'_

Right before my eyes what is left of my home planet starts to fall, overwhelmed by forces too evil to contemplate. So many enemies, so much hatred…so much pain. I can feel every death like it was my own, a hammer blow to my hearts. The beats of four fading out one by one by one until I can hardly breathe.

The rift in time and space has split wide open and through it pour all those who would take the place of the Time Lords.

The Skaro Degradations….worse than even Davros and his cult of Skaro could have ever imagined. Death and destruction is all they know and they will NEVER stop until they are all that is left in a devastated Universe.

The Hoard of Travesties…grotesque imitations of life who feed off the nightmares of those they conquer until they dream no longer.

The Nightmare Child….his Universe is one of darkness and despair, one where all those who are left are no more than slaves to his every whim.

The Couldhavebeen King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres …all the futures that might have happened, might still happen, if I don't act are here. All the unfulfilled lives, all the things that never were and yet should have been…have to be…are here. The good and the evil, both have to be allowed to survive.

Whatever was left of a blighted Universe would descend into something that the word 'hell' wouldn't even begin to cover. Those who survived would no doubt fall in the wars that will follow the end of this one…caught up in endless battles for supremacy fought between those who believe it is their right to rule. There would be no hope for anyone left after those who would be rulers of all the Universe have finished fighting over the meagre spoils of a Time War that has already raged far too long.

…_Sometimes I think a Time Lord lives too long…._

Why would the Time Lords start a war they could never win? What could they hope to gain from the destruction of the Universe they had guided for centuries? What could they want so badly that they would be willing to sacrifice all the things that once made them ….us…a race to be proud of?

There is only one way to find out, I have to step into the heart of the battle, I have to find the President, I have to know.

Gallifrey is a broken world, the ground now covered with the empty shells of Dalek ships. Some crashed and burnt, their occupants destroyed in the fires that still burn across the blasted fields. Others intact, their occupants still raging across the planet, death and destruction their legacy.

The Citadel is all but destroyed, filled with the dead and the dying. I can hear those who still live, in my head and in my hearts as they plead for death, plead for an end to their suffering as Time swirls around them, never letting them truly die.

The Lord President of the Time Lords still lives; he sits at the head of the table where he once held council with the highest of Time Lord Society. Now it, like so much else, is just a smoking ruin surrounded by the unmistakable stench of death.

"Doctor," the dislike in his voice is still evident even after all these years.

"Lord President," mine is little better as I struggle to comprehend the full extent of the devastation of a place that, despite everything, I had still considered to be indestructible. I turn slowly around, through the shattered remains of the Citadel the twin suns are barely visible, obscured by the smoke of a thousand fires. The once proud symbols of the Time Lords are now nothing more than piles of broken and shattered masonry.

I thought I held no place for Gallifrey in my hearts but to see it like this…ruined and never to be restored…dying in a morass of its own making I realise that wasn't true. I do still care and that is why I have to know why.

"I will not die Doctor," The President's voice cuts through my thoughts, quiet but still full of the arrogance he thought went with his position. "Not today, not tomorrow….never!"

"Then why this?" there is more anger than I had intended in my voice as I gesture to the decimation all around us.

"I had to, to save us." 

"You call this saving the Time Lords? Starting a war that you could never hope to win...just how does that 'save' your people?"

"There was no choice Doctor, it was fight or die and the Time Lords can not die... I cannot die."

"So you fought and your people still died...not your finest hour Rasillon," I didn't want to sound as full of hatred as I did. I hadn't been there, I didn't know the real reasons why the Time Lords chose…or were forced...to a war that was so against everything they had stood for, for a billion years but, as I looked at the shattered remains of MY home I couldn't help myself. "Destroyer of the Time Lords, not the way I would want to be remembered."

"I haven't destroyed them Doctor, I have saved them. Those that still live….we will ascend and become immortal. The perfect Guardians of everything, free of the constraints of a physical form, creatures of consciousness alone, we will exist outside of time, for all time….forever"

"The Final Sanction?" I had always thought it to be a myth, a story of impossible events with an outcome that would change the Universe in ways that were almost incomprehensible.

"You must help us Doctor," it wasn't a request more of an order and one that I wasn't going to obey, ever.

The Final Sanction would change everything, creation itself would cease to be, there would be no Universe, no planets, no civilisations (good or evil), no past, no present and no future. There would be nothing, an empty void.

"Why? Why would I want to help you to do something that is so wrong…so very, very wrong?"

"Despite what you may choose to think Doctor, you are still a child of Gallifrey and as long as your hearts still beat you always will be."

He was right, for all I wanted to disbelieve him, he was right. I WAS a child of Gallifrey and I had a duty to my heritage.

_The Doctor has the Moment and he will use it….._

I couldn't allow The President to instigate his plan; the Final Sanction could never be allowed to take place.

NEVER

If what I have to do next means the end of the Time Lords then I do that willingly…knowing that the Universe I leave behind will be the one that was meant to be….at least in this reality.

I close my hand around The Moment, such a small thing and yet with such devastating power, the power to end this Time War here and now. End it irrevocably and it has to be the only way.

I will die alongside those who with one breath would claim to be my family and yet with the next breath would disavow me, banish me, put me on trial and try time and again to end my life.

"We will become the masters of time itself. Don't you see it Doctor, don't you understand how ascension will give us what every race surely craves… ….power….glory…. immortality?"

With those final, mad words the fate of the Time Lords was sealed. My destiny was clear…I HAD to stop them. There was no option left to me, none at all. For the sake of all the humanities that lived in this Universe I had to use The Moment…I had to end the Time War.

I had to kill my own people.


End file.
